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3 Rev. Eur. Comp. & Int'l Envtl. L. iv (1994)

handle is hein.journals/reel3 and id is 1 raw text is: Editorial At least since the Industrial Revolution, there has been a tension between the need for governments and companies to protect the secrets of state and trade in the name of national security and economic pro- gress, and the right of citizens and consumers to know about and respond to the changing world around them. Child labour laws, minimum wage laws, competition laws, and consumer protection laws have sought to inform individuals and to protect them from the abuses of commercial power. It was significant, therefore, that the world's first severe chemical acci- dent involved unequal participants - a large US chemical company and a desperately poor population in Bhopal, India. The sudden horror of Bhopal is more immediate than concerns about insidious clusters of childhood leukaemia but, whether the environmental dangers are acute or chronic, not knowing the threat makes one unable to resist or respond. This issue of RECIEL explores how private individuals and governments might go about finding answers to questions about the environment. It examines cur- rently-emerging legal mechanisms for gaining access to information sources in both the local and inter- national contexts. Reliable information-gathering and information access are essential at many points in the process of environmental protection, for design of institutional systems, monitoring of implementation, identification of compliance problems, and develop- ment of their soulution. In the context of international legal systems, this information may be more difficult to access due to reluctance of states to share econ- omically sensitive information or to expose their internal affairs to scrutiny. Yet international access to various sources of information is rapidly becoming recognized as a desirable goal, if not a full legal right. Development of legal systems to provide international environmental information might be conceptualized on two planes: intejgovernmental and international commerical. Developments on the former plane include intergovernmental arrangements to establish databases, such as the UNEP GRID- to exchange infor- mation such as under the London Guidelines concern- ing dangerous chemicals; to conduct environmental impact assessments and make these available for comment by other countries, such as under the Espoo 6 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 13F, UK and 238 Main Street, iv Convention; to notify other countries of disaster man- agement plans and of actual accidents, such as under the OPRC Convention; to grant public access to environmental information, such as under the EC Directive; and to make public reports on environmen- tal performance, such as through the Commission on Sustainable Development. Among international com- mercial arrangements are the use of ecolabels, environmental audits, environmental liability and investment information disclosures, and pollution emission registers. Developments on both planes are moving at a rapid rate, especially in the private sector where market forces and individual initiatives are driving forward the pace of change. Governments which are to be accountable to their own people, and to the rest of the world, need to open their own records and also to require environmental disclosure from those they regulate. Yet, regulated entities have a legitimate business need to keep cer- tain information from competitors, and to protect themselves from deliberate attempts to damage their public image whilst they attempt in good faith to attain compliance with new environmental laws. Claims of fear of economic harm must be carefully scrutinized, to ensure thepyare not used to cover up environmental fault. Governments, too, have legit- intate rational economic and security needs and wish to ensure effective operation by not exposing every thought and idea, even those eventually rejected, to public scrutiny. Governmental secrecy claims must also be carefully scrutinized however, or they may be regularly usea as- smoke screens. Tensions between these different interests in secrecy and open- ness are manifest in the current evolution of rights to access environmental information. Debate surrounds whether audits and ecolabels should be voluntary or mandatory and for whom, whether audits can be used to prove environmental liability, what commercially sensitive information should be disclosed, how to take due account of information gathered in environ- mental impact assessments, and so on. The article by Suzanne Clabon, entitled 'Ecolabelling', demonstrates how companies seek to increase mar- ket share by appealing to the 'new-found environmen- tal instincts of customers'. Laws requiring govern- Cambridge, MA 02142, USA. Editorial Volume 3 Number I

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